Not all aircraft look like tubes with wings.
There have been some truly bizarre aircraft that utterly defy convention. From brilliantly eccentric pioneers to ‘lifting bodies’, and experimental aircraft that can’t quite decide what they are, there has been a whole host of thrillingly unorthodox flying machines. Let’s meet them.
10: Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar
The Avrocar was beautifully bold and utterly flawed. Its flying saucer design embodied Cold War ambition, rivalled only by the equally implausible Couzinet CP-360. The idea? A supersonic, VTOL marvel. What emerged? A noisy, unstable disk that looked the part but never truly flew the part.
Backed initially by the US Air Force, the project envisioned speeds of Mach 3.5 at 100,000 feet. Designed in Avro’s Special Projects Group, the Avrocar evolved into a proof-of-concept vehicle. It had to prove a new propulsion system—and fulfil the Army’s dream of a “Flying Jeep” with range and payload far beyond requirements.
10: Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar
At the core was the Turborotor: three jet engines spun a 124-blade fan to push air down for lift and out for control. The radical design exploited the Coanda effect and gyroscopic forces to achieve some measure of stability. On paper, it was futuristic. In practice, not so much. “Hubcapping”—a destabilising pitch-roll wobble—plagued the craft.
Though two were built and tested, performance lagged. The Avrocar never flew free of ground effect and suffered from hot gas ingestion and inadequate control. Ironically, a rubber skirt might’ve turned it into a hovercraft, beating the SRN-1 to history’s punch. It remained a glorious failure.
9: Vought V-173
In the 1930s, Charles H. Zimmerman advocated the ‘discoidal’ aircraft with a pancake-shaped fuselage as a lifting surface. Zimmerman had worked on NACA’s early wind tunnels. He wanted to produce a circular VTOL aircraft capable of flight at unbeatable speeds and altitudes, and able to hover like a helicopter. This proved overly ambitious with contemporary technology but earned Zimmerman a prestigious NACA award.
Zimmerman believed that discoidal aircraft could be capable of near-vertical take-off and landings. They also promised excellent manoeuvrability, high speed and great structural strength. The concept, nicknamed the ‘Zimmer Skimmer’, was radical and unlikely, so Zimmerman set about demonstrating its veracity with a series of prototypes for both himself and the Vought company.
9: Vought V-173
The V-173 flew in 1942. Soon, locals were reporting UFOs, even if the term didn’t exist yet (It was only coined in 1953). Aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh flew the type and found it handled extremely well. Initial problems were centred more around the propulsion system, which used a complex geared system to route power to the propellers from the engine, than the novel aerodynamic configuration.
One propulsion failure led to a dramatic emergency landing on a beach. As the aircraft landed, the pilot spotted two utterly bewildered bathers in the aircraft’s path. Full braking effect was applied, resulting in the aircraft somersaulting over on itself. Thanks to the aircraft’s immense strength, both the pilot and aircraft emerged unscathed.
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